Friday, March 30, 2012

Another argument in favor of "ObamaCare"

Several conservative justices may honestly have been looking at arguments that would enable the Affordable Care Act to be justified under the Commerce Clause without expanding the use of that clause beyond what they'd like to see.

One such argument, advanced in some of the lower court briefs, is that regulation of health care is an activity that only the Federal Government can do effectively. This is because any state unilaterally making health care more easily available to its residents, especially as a subsidized part of welfare, will pay a penalty in the form of an influx of needy people. The only way to avoid this is by an inter-state regulation uniformizing these benefits among the states -- exactly as the ACA does; and, the only government entity capable of doing this regulation is, of course, the federal government. That's why healthcare should be federally regulated but not broccoli consumption.